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‘WE HAVEN’T COME TO BRATISLAVA TO COMFORT EACH OTHER.’ So begin Donald Tusk’s pre-summit remarks. He’s got that right. Tusk also said “the only thing that makes sense is to have a sober and brutally honest assessment of the situation.” According to Playbook’s diplomatic sources, that’s what is on the menu this morning: “a very frank discussion.” http://bit.ly/2cC9jRj

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE BRAT PACK TODAY … You can’t make up if you don’t fight in the first place, but as one southern European diplomat warned Playbook, “a fake unity would be a failure as much as strong divisions.”

Watch out for …

Efforts to pull down Germany from new angles: If you can’t beat them on economic policy, just shift terrain, is how the French thinking goes. That explains why we’re hearing a lot about EU defense cooperation these days. It would help with terror prevention, but with the U.K. excluded, that leaves France with the EU’s No. 1 armed forces and Italy at No. 2. Greece has the most troops. See a pattern? But what about all this Hungarian enthusiasm, you ask? Defense cooperation is a rallying point for anyone frustrated with Germany, say Playbook’s (non-German) sources.
EPP tensions over Hungary: One of the reasons Viktor Orbán hasn’t faced greater problems with other national leaders since his reelection as Hungarian prime minister in 2010, is that he’s always had the protection of the EPP. That’s wearing thin now, as this week’s outburst by Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister (and Juncker’s former deputy PM) Jean Asselborn shows.

If nothing else, the 27 participating countries will re-agree that there is to be no Brexit negotiation until Article 50 is triggered.

Feel-good factor: There will be a strong push to get the Paris climate deal ratified by the EU rather than laboriously through national parliaments, so the EU looks green and organized.

The spin machine: Tusk is serious about sticking to the press lines Playbook first published on Monday. If there’s major change, he lost the fight.

Lost in translation: Bratislava doesn’t have the same capability for live interpretation as Brussels does, so prepare for some crossed wires at today’s English-language lunch.

Schulz not invited to the party, and he’s not happy about it, requesting other party group leaders join him in protesting his exclusion, according to Playbook’s source. He might be better off focusing on the bigger problem in his life: the EPP’s determination to kick him out of his job.

**A message from the EPP Group:Stop the petty quarrels, is the message of the EPP Group Chairman Manfred Weber to the leaders gathering today in Bratislava for the EU 27 Summit. National governments must finally take responsibility for their actions and tell people at home what they decide in Brussels.**

EXCLUSIVE — COMMISSION ON GREEN AVIATION CRUSADE: EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc and Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete have teamed up to browbeat countries into a deal on cutting international airline emissions. First to join their coalition are Mexico and the vulnerable Marshall Islands. The next step: debate at the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) assembly, set to start September 27 in Montreal. The green team wants to cut emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. http://politi.co/2cM4DNN

INSIDE THE APPLE CASE — HOW VESTAGER GOT APPLE: Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s colleagues trust her a lot. They trust her so much they didn’t even want to ask questions about how she arrived at her Apple decision, or what the price tag was, before signing off on it ahead of its announcement. And that included Phil Hogan, the commissioner from Ireland, the country that was the legal target of the investigation.

While Vestager was happy to let the world think she was spending August on the Danish coast with a copy of “The Reader on the 6.27,” her running shoes, and her kids to keep her company, in reality, she was planning an audacious political and media blitz. “In a single decision, Vestager seized the world’s attention, upended a country’s business model, riled a global corporate giant, and created a diplomatic incident with the European Union’s chief ally, the United States.” Vestager was not only judge, jury and executioner of the biggest competition ruling in history, she was also the TV star of the case.

Unlike her boss Jean-Claude Juncker, Vestager didn’t just talk about a “political” Commission, or throw passion at it: she delivered. “Apple was not her target, legally speaking: that was the Irish government. She was looking for a case that would stop the culture of rampant tax avoidance in Europe in its tracks. The world’s biggest company was merely the collateral damage.”

VESTAGER MET GROUP LINKED TO APPLE IN PARIS THURSDAY: Margrethe Vestager was in Paris on Thursday to address the Forum for EU/U.S. Legal-Economic Affairs, a joint initiative by the Mentor Group and British American Tobacco, according to a University of Bath-funded document archive. The Mentor Group describes itself as a “peer group of supreme court justices, European Union commissioners and corporate chief legal officers,” established in 1983.

Curiously, the group listed itself on the EU transparency register only on Wednesday, September 14 at 4:11 p.m., just hours before Vestager’s appearance. Commissioners should only accept invitations from groups already on the register.

The group claims Apple and a range of big tech, tobacco and oil companies as members. Its website is “under construction,” though the group says it has existed for 33 years and has an annual budget of €712,853. Vestager has published her speech remarks on her Commission homepage (they are not yet registered in the Commission’s speech database): http://bit.ly/2chTke0.

JUNCKER CALLS BARROSO ‘AN HONEST MAN’: Having just launched an investigation into former Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s new Goldman Sachs job, the current EC president said he “does not see any major issue with him working in the financial sector.” http://politi.co/2cQD41R

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL: It’s easy to criticize former politicians, and it’s easy to forget, for example, the fact that in early 2015 Barroso rejected the transition allowance payments offered to him by the EU on leaving office. At the same time, for Barroso to complain about arbitrary treatment (as he did in a letter earlier this week) is a bit rich. This is a man who forced former Commissioner John Dalli out of his job before allegations against him had been fully investigated. As Barroso said about that incident in court testimony in 2014: “It was clear to me that his position was untenable. I am a lawyer by training and to me the presumption of innocence is vital, but this is about political implications.” That’s the lesson the mirror offers to Barroso today.

SOTEU, HOW IT PLAYED ON DAY 2 …

Sorry is the hardest word for Juncker: Playbook overlooked this point as the State of the Union speech rolled off Juncker’s tongue. But it’s indeed notable that he did not offer a mea culpa or apology for presiding over the Brexit debacle. “Anyone expecting Juncker to bring up his own mistakes rather than pointing to those of others was in for a disappointment,” wrote Andreas Schwarskopff. http://bit.ly/2cQGLEW

Youth Guarantee wins strong support: Playbook asked in the POLITICO SOTEU live blog if the youth guarantee, which ensures all people under 25 get a job, apprenticeship, traineeship, or continued education offer within four months of leaving school or becoming unemployed, was appreciated by younger Europeans. Since then, lots of youth services have been in touch to say millions have benefitted from the scheme. However, no individual beneficiary identified themselves, which highlights a persistent EU problem: when it does good, most people don’t realize how the good was made possible.

COMMISSION — NAMES POTENTIAL TAX HAVENS: But will the newly published scoreboard be enough to shame them into improving tax compliance? POLITICO’s Bjarke Smith-Meyer combed through the scoreboard. He found that the British Virgin Islands, Cook Islands, and Montserrat score among the worst on the list. http://bit.ly/2cQFz42

COUNCIL — EU PROLONGS RUSSIA SANCTIONS: The six-month sanction extension (until March 15, 2017) consists of an asset freeze and a travel ban against 146 persons and 37 entities. http://bit.ly/2d0hAQK

PARLIAMENT — CHINA POSTPONES MEP VISIT IN DALAI LAMA PROTEST: Angry the Dalai Lama was invited to Strasbourg (his fifth time), China has put an MEPs’ visit to Shanghai next week on ice. More from Maïa de la Baume and Laurens Cerulus: http://politi.co/2cQIf1N

UK — MAY’S NUCLEAR POWER PLAY SHORT CIRCUITS: “When Theresa May slammed the brakes on a deal for the Chinese to help build Britain’s first nuclear reactor in a generation, the world sat up and paid attention. Here was a prime minister who wasn’t going to be hamstrung by her predecessors but would play by her own rules,” report Charlie Cooper and Alex Spence. “Nearly two months later, the deal is back on, with what Downing Street said were ‘beefed up’ security safeguards … Critics aren’t impressed.” http://politi.co/2d3w9po

GERMANY ‘S WEEKEND: A coordinated set of anti-free trade demonstrations will take place Sunday, designed to pressure the Social Democrats to oppose the EU-Canada trade deal CETA. Berlin will hold its regional election. In the meantime, 7,000 refugees have lost patience with German authorities over asylum processing delays and filed a lawsuit. http://bit.ly/2cQNgXY

Opposition fights for survival in Duma vote: “Dmitry Gudkov was once a rising star of an opposition movement that posed a threat to Vladimir Putin. Now he’s fighting to hang on to his seat in the Russian Duma,” reports Oliver Carroll. Still, things are looking (slightly) up for the opposition movement. “Although Putin and his backers will win on Sunday, there is still nervousness in the Kremlin over the falling popularity of United Russia. The party has been in steady decline since 2008, with short rebounds during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and immediately after the annexation of Crimea.” http://politi.co/2cCvDKB

BANKERS STEAL VIRTUAL CASH FROM THE KIDS: “Besuited central bankers are about to crash the cool kids’ digital currencies party,” reports Francesco Guerrera. “Originally conceived as a libertarian alternative to government-controlled money, e-currencies are now firmly on the radar of the old-school masters of monetary policy … But efforts to put an official stamp on digital money are irking the small but vocal band of purists who embraced so-called cryptocurrencies precisely because ‘there is no central authority to issue them,’ as stated in the founding document of bitcoin, the most famous e-currency.” http://politi.co/2cCxKhK

Economist on colossal companies:The venerable magazine says the dominance of mega-businesses is bad for the economy and the wider world. Adrian Wooldridge reports: http://econ.st/2cbcDSN

Estonian PM on the EU’s future: Taavi Rõivas says cooperation, not barriers, is the way forward. http://politi.co/2czX1ut

BRUSSELS CORNER …

EUROSTAR GOES DUTCH IN 2017: POLITICO’s transport reporter Joshua Posaner tells Playbook the Eurostar is set to expand its rail connections late next year to include a direct London-Amsterdam service, part of a push by train companies to effectively replace airlines on many European travel routes. The catch: If room can’t be found at Amsterdam Central for a fenced-off sterile security zone, as is the case at Brussels Midi station now, passengers would need to alight for an hour of checks at Lille before re-boarding for onward travel. A direct Amsterdam service would clock in at just under four hours.

EUROPEAN BOOK PRIZE SHORTLISTS: There are non-fiction and fiction categories. The winner of each section will be decided in Paris October 12 by a jury chaired by Oliver Stone and chiefly comprised of journalists. The award ceremony is at the European Parliament in Brussels in December.

**A message from the EPP Group:Watch this week’s plenary session in a nutshell. The European Parliament debated the State of the Union speech by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, with a call by EPP Group Chairman Manfred Weber to stop cheap populist rhetoric and act to improve the lives of Europeans. Our MEPs turned up pressure on the Polish government to respect the rule of law and scrap anti-democratic policies. Also, they debated civil and human rights in Turkey as well as sought further information on how the car emissions scandal went uncovered for years.**

**You’re invited: Join POLITICO for a frank discussion on the promises of the digital revolution and the challenges Europe needs to address to reap the benefits of hyper-connectedness at our second “Annual Data Summit.” This event, presented by Telefónica, will start with an interview of Andrus Ansip, European Commission vice-president for the Digital Single Market. To know more, visit http://politi.co/2cIs61N**